wrote:
William McHale wrote:
In talk.origins maff <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote:
Battle for the black hole
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1448141,00.html
Arthur I Miller recounts a historic clash between an Indian
student
and
the world's top astrophysicist
Thursday March 31, 2005
The Guardian
In the 1930s the rarefied world of science was ripped apart by a
controversy that was to have devastating consequences for the
development of astrophysics. It began when an Indian student
called
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra) decided to work out what
would
happen if Einstein's special theory of relativity was applied to
the
processes that went on inside stars. This step was important
because
particles inside stars travel at speeds close to that of light, a
situation where Einstein's theory must be used.
Pencil in hand, 19-year-old Chandra did some calculations. At the
time,
scientists assumed that when a star burned up the last of its
fuel,
it
would turn into a ball of cinders and go cold - become a white
dwarf
star. Chandra's mathematics showed that a white dwarf much
heavier
than
the sun could not exist, but would undergo an eternal collapse
into
a
tiny point of infinite density, until it slipped though a crevice
in
space and time, from which nothing could escape, not even light.
It
was
the first irrefutable mathematical proof that black holes - as
they
were later dubbed - had to exist.
A couple of nitpicks here:
1. Chandrasekhar's proof was not irrefutable; it showed that
massive
stars
could not stop at white dwarfs but it was shown some years later
that
there
was at least one other potential stopping point; Neutron Stars.
It was Robert Oppenheimer (IIRC) and his students who showed that
some stars
were too massive to start at Neutron Stars.
2. General Relativity was not used because of the speeds of the
particles in
stars (it is pretty irrelevant) but rather because on the
relatively
small
scales and large masses involved, Newtonian Mechanics break down.
Ok, mind you all that being said, Chandrasekhar's work was amazing
and it did
first speculate on the existence of black holes.
I heard once in BBC Radio 4 that someone way back - more than halfway
to Newton, I think - did consider that if light travels at a certain
speed, a large body might be so massive that the speed of light
wouldn't be sufficient for particles to escape. But it didn't catch
on. Ah... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole has coverage.
"The
concept of a body so massive that not even light could escape from it
was put forward by the English geologist John Michell in a 1783 paper
sent to the Royal Society."
.../geologist??/...
Oh, well. People surprise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
"She was also known as the 'Laurence Olivier of Orgasm'." Golly.
I suppose Sir Larry gets to be "The Hedy Lamarr of History Plays".
iirc, newton himself suggested something similar to a black hole,
although he believed that it was visible since some of the light
particles would fly out for a short distance, and then get sucked back
in.
.
